Broken ankle’s impact on a broken mind

Nearly two weeks ago I broke my ankle. I had a fall while indoor rock climbing (bouldering). There are no harnesses; bouldering is just climbing up to about 2 metres and there’s lots of soft mats to fall onto. I was climbing over a corner, reaching for the last hold and I didn’t quite have the reach. I feel on top of the cover between the soft mats and wall and my ankle slipped under the wall. I dislocated and shattered my ankle into 4 pieces. ouch.

I spent a week in hospital, had 2 surgeries, there’s now a plate and about a dozen bolts now in my leg. It now looks like there’s a tooth brush in there. I’ll be in a cast for 12 weeks and I’ll need to have day surgery again to remove the big giant bolt running through my ankle before I can bear weight on it again. I have to figure out if my super hero name should be cyborg sam or titanium sam?

I’m now mostly getting around on crutches and a knee walker.

Now that I’ve told you the story of how I broke my ankle, I also want to tell you how it’s impacted my broken mind. This has been stressful. If you’ve read my other posts you would know that I’m also looking for a job and I haven’t had much luck there yet (another stressor). I have at least 3 stories about my mental health to share with you.

My first story; So I was rushed through emergency and had surgery within 24 hours of the accident. The accident occurred on a Saturday. The first day in hospital was hard, I couldn’t sleep well after the surgery and I broke down into tears a few times. Hospitals are noisy and the pain/discomfort makes it really hard to sleep. Nothing out of the ordinary and it’s to be expected. The physio had cleared me to leave on Tuesday but no doctor came to give me the all clear. Turns out the doctor wanted to do a second surgery on Thursday. Coming out of Surgery Thursday evening was hard, probably my hardest day. I couldn’t sleep. I was just starting to get use to sleeping with it before the second surgery, I didn’t realize how much healing had occurred in just a few days. And then I was back to square one. I had a lack of sleep induced depressive episode Friday night. It was the worse episode I’ve had in a long time. One of my triggers; from about 5-6 pm Friday evening I was trying to request a sleeping pill to help that night. The nurses changed shifts and at around 10:30 pm the nurse told me the doctor couldn’t be bothered filling in a script for 1 night. That rejection hit me like a brick wall, it was the last straw that put me over the edge and I fell into a downward spiral of depression. I was probably in this state for around 30 minutes, tears rolling down my face and thoughts of, “I’m broken, I’m just so tired, etc” rolling through my mind. One of the thoughts that kept me in this spiral was just realizing the fact I was having a depressive episode. Go figure. It was actually an interesting experience from a mindfulness point of view. What got me out of it was realizing that I needed to call the nurse and try to push for that sleeping pill again. That thought had to come along a few times before it helped me get out of that cycle. I didn’t actually call the nurse a second time but had managed to fall asleep for a few hours before someone’s machine started beeping at 1:30am, I asked the nurse for some endone and the warn fuzzies from that was enough to help me sleep until the early morning.

My second story involves my job hunting efforts. While in hospital I had to cancel/postpone a few leads in regards to job hunting. I had 3 interviews scheduled for that week. 1 I withdrew my interest because I wasn’t that excited about the company. 1 I was able to move to a skype interview. I had a skype interview on Wednesday in my hospital gown while laying in bed; hospital equipment in the background. I even put on my suit jacket to smarten up the hospital gown. Unfortunately I found out I was unsuccessful with this interview, I mentioned my perfect role would be more like a quality coach role and apparently that turned them off. I rescheduled one interview for today at 1pm. Fingers crossed this goes well because it’s the last interview I have booked with 13 companies so far. Nothing else has turned up a promising job offer yet. So on top of feeling broken physically I feel constantly bombarded with these messages of rejection due to job hunting efforts. It’s taking a toll on me.

My third story happened just this morning. Since I got out of hospital I had been hanging out at my partner’s parents place. They offered me their spare room while I recover and my partner’s mum is a nurse. It seemed convenient and I took them up on their offer. Last night I went to my uncle’s for the first time since getting out of hospital. I couldn’t really sleep very well last night because I’m starting to get stressed about my job hunting efforts. My uncle’s live in Edgecliff so it appears more convenient than Gladesville where my partner’s parents live. However Edgecliff is hillier; it was a challenge getting down the driveway this morning on my walker. It’s not something I want to do every day. So I get to Edgecliff shopping centre and wait around to get some blood tests done for my weight loss surgery catch up next week. After this I go to head down to the station platform. Turns out Edgecliff doesn’t have a lift down to the platform. This hit me more than I expected. I needed to go to the toilet to have a little teary. I think I’m over it now and it wasn’t a full on depressive episode but that little reminder of how broken I feel hurt. I couldn’t even get up to the buses to get into the city. I ended up getting an uber. So I probably won’t be staying at my uncle’s while I recover which is a shame. It’s just too hard.

I have some other stories; adventures with wheel chair accessible buses, financial stresses due to this accident, healing and fatigues impact on my mental health and the differences between having a physical injury vs mental injury but I’ll leave these for another time as I have to leave this cafe soon.

Have you ever had an injury that impacted your mental health? My sciatic nerve injury 2 years ago had a similar impact on my mental state too.